How to Motivate the Employees?

Motivated employees can count for the success of your organization. Demotivated employees can cause that your business fails or deliver poor results. Therefore it is important to ask how to motivate the employees.

Information about motivating is readily available. However, it’s hard to apply the ideas in many workplaces. Some workplaces still act as if the employee should be grateful to have a job. In that kind of organization, little concern is given to providing a workplace that fosters employee growth and learning.

Some ideas have been tried out and become theories about motivation. That kind of theories about motivation helps you to understand the underlying idea of motivation and how you can use it to motivate the employees. Below you will find a list of some examples of this kind of theories is.

Learn more about how to motivate your employees.

Information about motivating employees is readily available but it’s hard to apply the ideas in many workplaces. The Lucubrate Crash Course about motivation helps you to understand the underlying idea of motivation and how you can use it to motivate the employees. You can take a look at the course: Motivate the employees.

Maslow hierarchy of motivation

Maslow represented his theory as a hierarchical triangle. This shows how basic needs must be met before one can “climb” the hierarchy, to address more complex needs.

Herzberg two factor theory

According to Herzberg, there are some job factors that result in satisfaction while there are other job factors that prevent dissatisfaction. According to Herzberg, the opposite of “Satisfaction” is “No satisfaction” and the opposite of “Dissatisfaction” is “No Dissatisfaction”.

Hawthorne Effect

The Hawthorne Effect refers to the fact that people will modify their behavior simply because they are being observed. The productivity increases when someone is concerned about the worker, his/her work, and the workplace.

Taylor’s theory of motivation

According to Taylor, workers do not naturally enjoy work and so need close supervision and control. Therefore managers should break down production into a series of small tasks. Workers should then be given appropriate training and tools so they can work as efficiently as possible on one set task. Workers are then paid according to the number of items they produce in a set period of time- piece-rate pay. As a result, workers are encouraged to work hard and maximize their productivity.

The Expectancy Theory

The Expectancy Theory is a motivational theory based on cognitive psychology. It proposes that people are motivated by their conscious expectations of what will happen if they do certain things, and are more productive when they believe their expectations will be realized.

Three-Dimensional Theory of Attribution

The three-dimensional model of attribution posits that the explanations people give for the things that happen to them can vary on three distinct factors, and these variations have consequences for people’s mood, self-perception, and well-being.

Attribution theory

Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking and behavior. The theory assumes that people try to determine why people do what they do, that means, attribute causes to behavior. A person seeking to understand why another person did something may attribute one or more causes to that behavior.

Practical understanding of one of the theories

Let us look at an example how to use this theory of attribution. The theory has been used to explain the difference in motivation between high and low achievers. According to attribution theory, high achievers will approach rather than avoid tasks related to succeeding because they believe success is due to high ability and effort which they are confident of. Failure is thought to be caused by bad luck or a poor exam, i.e. not their fault. Thus, failure doesn’t affect their self-esteem but success builds pride and confidence. On the other hand, low achievers avoid success-related chores because they tend to doubt their ability and/or assume success is related to luck or to “who you know” or to other factors beyond their control. Thus, even when successful, it isn’t as rewarding to the low achiever because he/she doesn’t feel responsible, i.e., it doesn’t increase his/her pride and confidence.